Terrie Purdum
Publishing charity golf events, and giving sponsors the kick they deserve for participating in tournaments that make a difference, and change people’s lives.
Anything to support ANY Military golf events and, showing gratitude, for the men and women dedicated to serving our country.
Making golf fun, being a rebel visionary with a very traditional game, and assisting all the PGA, GCSAA, in getting the consumer educated, and being included in the ONLY regional Golf Magazine to survive in the south since 1999.
Oh, yeah, dancing in the full moon light.
Shannon Coates
Shannon Coates was born and raised in West Palm Beach, FL. She moved to Oviedo, FL 20 years ago.
Wife to Kenny Coates and mother of Madison Coates, she spends most of her free time watching Madi play volleyball. She has also been a member of the Oviedo Woman’s Club since 2012.
It was June 2002 when she read a “Help Wanted” ad in the newspaper and her fate was forever sealed with Terrie Purdum and the motley crew of Golf Central Magazine (Florida Golf Central Magazine at the time). Since then, it’s been rollercoaster of well-timed obscene jokes and spewing drinks through her nose with no end in sight.
In 2015 she helped Terrie launch www.turflife.club. A lifestyle brand saluting all things turf, whether you play on it, grow it, or mow it.
Shannon can be reached at Shannon@golfcentralmag.com
Melahn Cable
Melahn’s interests range from horses, to photography, to quilting, and she can be seen on most weekends out and about enjoying the local music scene (and often onstage, singing with the band). Melahn is also an avid reader, and enjoys creative writing.
Sara Rogers
Sara Rogers is the daughter of British global nomads. Her passion is recognizing opportunities that others don’t see in people, products, & markets and embracing technical challenges. In support of her family members that served in the Royal Forces, she is impassioned by working with all veterans as evidenced by her work with NextCareer helping Veterans obtain free training and career placement in partner companies, supporting Congressman Mullin’s Veterans townhalls, and their partnership with One Tribe Foundation (formerly 22Kill). She is multifaceted in her career and interests.
She has lived most of her life in Florida, attending the University of Florida for her BA and the University of Central Florida for her MSEE. She lived briefly in Sao Paulo, Brazil as a child, England with extended family for a summer as a tween. After college, Sara relocated to NJ briefly and settled in the DFW Metroplex for 15 years. She moved back to Central Florida where she met team GCM via Queen Bee, who introduced her to golf and showed her beginners were welcome on the links. When she’s not honing her golf game, Sara can be found snapping pics of underwater paradises around the world or curled up with a good book and one of her feline roommates. She is a certified PADI Rescue Diver and Underwater Photographer which comes in handy looking for lost golf balls and rescuing golfers who fall in the water hazards!
Jay Golden
Additionally, GolfWorld Magazine coined the title of an article “Jay Golden: Golf’s True Renaissance Man” which can now be seen on the Golf Digest website. This is in relation to Golden combining his interests, hobbies and skills with this great game. His humor, art, poems, songs, articles, books, trick-shot shows, screenplays, TV appearances, cartoons, DVD’s and YouTube videos, are examples.
Golden says, “I hope to ignite an interest for you to combine YOUR interests, hobbies and skills with golf to enhance your enjoyment of the game you love.”
Tony Leodora
Born in Philadelphia, he now lives in Nokomis, Florida – in the golf-rich area just south of
Sarasota.
His latest quest finds him closing in on playing his 1,000th golf course – and he has the scorecard from every one of them.
His love of golf course architecture has led him to working closely on projects with architects Arnold Palmer, Tom Fazio, Rees Jones, Ron Garl, Dr. Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry, Ron Pritchard, Roger Rulewich and Ed Shearon.
Mike May
Mike traces his roots as a golf writer to the 1983 (British) Open Championship which was held at the Royal Birkdale Golf Club near Southport, England. He attended all four days of the event and then voluntarily wrote his own account of that major championship.
In addition to being a golf writer, Mike is a broadcaster for high school sports in Florida, officiates high school soccer in Florida, and works in the scoring division of R2 Innovative Technologies, which implements and oversees scoring at LPGA golf tournaments.
As an avid exercise enthusiast, he also serves on the board of directors of PHIT America that is focused on bringing daily P.E. back to all U.S. schools. Mike is a 1985 graduate of the University of Florida where he earned a degree in broadcasting. Mike can be reached on email at: mmaymarketing@gmail.com
Anthony Williams
His advocacy work was rewarded with the 2014 GCSAA Excellence in Government Relations Award and in 2010 he won GCSAA’s highest environmental honor the President's Award for Environmental Stewardship. He was also recognized by the Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association as their Environmental Communicator of the Year.
Williams enjoys martial arts and archery in his free time. He is a 9th degree black belt and 2001
inductee into the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame.
Greg Corbo
Prior to graduating the Golf Academy of America (Orlando, 1999), Greg met Terrie Purdum and joined Florida Golf Central Magazine where he was a welcome addition in the magazine’s first year of publishing and eventually served a role as Managing Editor. Greg’s experiences at FGCM thrusted him into a career of newspaper journalism serving as Sports Editor for The Daily Southerner, Tarboro, N.C., and The Montclair Times, Montclair, N.J. Other than straight sports reporting, his duties included photography, pagination and strong headline writing at both publications where he earned Press Association awards at each stop.
Greg is still very active in the game of golf as a professional caddie (Professional Caddies Association, 1999) serving members and guests on weekends at prestigious private clubs in the Northeast such as Lancaster Country Club, Lancaster, P.A., Essex County Country Club, West Orange, N.J., and Baltusrol Golf Club, Springfield, N.J.
In 2008, Greg organized an annual 911 Be A Hero For Zero Memorial Caddie Walk where him and other fellow caddies walk over 20 miles with bags of clubs from West Orange N.J., into Ground Zero Manhattan to honor victims that were members of golf clubs in the greater Northern New Jersey area. Greg has lived in Lancaster, Pennsylvania since August of 2010 working as a Quality Assurance Engineer for Williams Forrest – a digital product agency. Greg also keeps in touch with his passion for photojournalism by doing freelance work for sidelinechatter.com. A graduate of Lycoming College (1997) Williamsport, P.A., Greg is also the proud founder of Lycoming Lacrosse (1995).
Joel Jackson
I enlisted in the U. S. Coast Guard OCS program and served as an Admin Officer at Base Miami Beach as the Operations Officer on the Coast Guard Cutter Hollyhock, a 180 ft. Buoy Tender that covered the east coast of Florida from Miami to Cape Kennedy. My final post was as Commanding Officer of the Coast Guard LORAN Station on South Caicos Island.
My golf course maintenance experience began in the 1960’s working on construction and maintenance of the Apollo Beach GC near Tampa. In the early 1970’s, I worked on some projects as an assistant for golf course architect William H. Dietsch, Jr.
In 1974 I began a career at Walt Disney World, which would span 20 years. I left briefly from 1988-91 to work with Arnold Palmer as he developed the Isleworth G&CC.
I returned to Disney in 1991 as Superintendent at the Osprey Ridge GC and then the Magnolia Course. Finally in December 1997 I retired with 20 total years of service with Disney.
I had also been active in the Florida GCSA and beginning in 1990 I served as the editor of the chapter’s Florida Green magazine until 2013. In 1998 I also took on the role of Communications Director and eventually Executive Director until my retirement in 2013.
In 1998, Pat Jones asked if I would like to write for Golfdom Magazine. I accepted and have been a regular Contributing Editor ever since. In 2017, I asked current Editor-in- Chief Seth Jones if I could continue to write, but on a part-time basis.
Dave Finn
Since then, Dave has devoted his time to traveling so he can write about golf destinations that he has visited which include 9 Canadian provinces, 15 US States and 24 countries. His articles have been released in several well-respected publications and is one of only 20 world-wide Ambassadors for Leading Courses, the largest golf review and booking site in Europe.
He is a 6-time national award-winning recipient from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada and the Travel Media Association of Canada. However, his proudest moment was winning the gold medal in the Stableford Division at the World Hickory Open in Scotland.
Rick Harris
In Loving Memory
Rick earned two master degrees in Psychology, and Administration and Supervision. He spent 19 years as a school psychologist in Monticello and Orlando, Florida until He retired in August 1992. During that time he also worked part time as an area golf director running golf tournaments for Golfweek magazine.
Also, while in Orlando from 1979 to the present Rick started the Ventura Golf Association (VGA); served as a member and was president twice of the Amateur Golfers of Orlando (AGO); and in 1994 he started the Senior Amateur Golfers Association (SAGA). He has lived at Ventura Country Club for the past 36 years.
Rick also began working on a part time basis as a writer for the Florida Golf Central magazine in 2000 owned by publisher Terrie Purdum.
Rick has been retired for the past 25 years while working part-time as a golf director, writer, and author of a book while playing golf 1-2 times weekly. Over the years Rick has participated in and won many golf tournaments culminating in a 10th place finish out of three thousand plus golfers in the 2005 World Amateur Golf Tournament in Myrtle Beach. Currently Rick and Betty enjoy visiting with their 4 children and 9 grandchildren.
Bill Filson
-PGA Golf Professional of the Year
-PGA of Royal St. Cloud
Golf Links
Bob Bolton
